DISQUS

This has happened to me indirectly and to other bloggers I know. I have written about things that have later been taken up in daily newspapers and once even on radio. They are usually careful enough to not copy exactly so I question whether it is really plagiarism. Often newspapers will monitor blogs for content that seems like it deserves a wider audience. I am not sure there is anything worng with that. Sometimes I am even glad to see something picked up by the "mainstream" media from a blog and get wider publicity.

I also have used Numly for a couple of years. I originally used the WordPress plugin, but I don't think that has been updated or supported for a long time. I was manually attaching the Numly generated information to my posts for a while, but find that I have not been doing it for the past few months. Just too cumbersome to remember to do for every post. I think I will be discontinuing using Numly. Too bad as it is a good service, just needs to be more easily incorporated into WordPress.

Jonathan - Do you still use Numly? I don't see it here.

The tray in the left background looks good too! Happy WW, and thanks for your visit.

What beautiful creature. Hope it made it across the road safely! Happy WW!

Hi Jonathan! Maybe I am not reading the post correctly, but I am on the site and I see both the visible and hidden images?

This would be a great technique, but the flaw you point out makes it useless for the kind of message I would want to appear on a scraper's site! hehe.

But if you use it only for attribution, I would think there could be a way to come up with an image that would be unobtrusive to feed readers and provide a visual attribution link or two in the content n the scrapers site.

And if you could take it a step further and make the "hidden" content text and images and long enough, it might get around duplicate content to a small extent? In other words, don't just put in an image, but actually add some content that only appears in the feed, not on the original post. I don't know enough about how duplicate content is judged to know if this would make a difference, maybe you do?

-Will

on edit: I don't see a way to subscribe to a comment thread to get email notification of follow up comments. Did you remove it, or am I blind?

I think your one point about the "time sink" encompasses 90% of the frustrated bloggers. I know I find my stuff scraped whenever I look, so I stopped looking. It is just too frustrating and time consuming. The thieves are just overrunning the fort!

If I get a ping or trackback that leads me to a scraper, I will take the time to delete the pooing and try to find out the host of the scraper. I then will email the abuse department at the host. Once or twice, they took action after checking out the site. The usual response is to demand a full DMCA, and that is where I stop making the effort.

I don't have enough time to deal with the issue, especially since I make virtually no money from my site. People who make an income from their sites and take the time needed to deal with scrapers are probably using up more time and effort than it is worth.

It would be great to have more automated tools available, but until the hosts get serious about the obvious scrapers, nothing will stop them.

There is also the point that one host made after I contacted them which was something like this: "Well yes the site has your entire blog post, but we see no monetization of their site, and they link back to you at the end of the stolen content. Legally there is nothing we can do."

Sorry to vent, but it does get frustrating.

Wow! I recently found a whole bunch of 404 errors in Google Webmaster Tools. They were also non existent directories, but many different ones. I wondered where Google was coming up with them. Because they are many different directories, it may not be workfriendly, but it is still curious. I think the htaccess code is a good idea anyway. My htaccess is getting very long!

Yes it does, and now I add a follow-up request! If you, with your expertise in this area, feel the need to move from Feedburner, then we should do the same. When you successfully do the move from Feedburner, could you do a post explaining the why and how?

I know I probably have far fewer subscribers than PT, but I have four different feeds at Feedburner. I have the full and comments, but I also have excerpts and headlines only feeds which are created by Feedburner from my original full feed. I have subscribers for each, but I don't know if I there are plugins that can do the same thing if I discontinue Feedburner. My recent experience with scrapers tells me that they do not only steal the full feed, but also the excerpts feed, so I know they are getting it from Feedburner.

Hi Jonathan - I read your feed, but I don't think you use either of these? Maybe I am missing what they actually do to the feed. Are you using either of these?

@fra: Keith did pop in on Dec 15th after an absense since mid September, to say he was alive and well, just busy with other things.

There is an increasing number of people who can't use the plugin because the process fails along the way. Keith has been unable to fix the issues and the plugin does seem to work for most people. So I think we are stuck with what we have.

Remember that WordPress plugins are not a profit center for the authors. Generally they write them because they enjoy doing it or needed some functionality for themselves that was not already in place. They are then made available to the rest of us to try and use. So we really can't complain if a plugin does not work for all of us or if it is not readily supported.

Having said that, I stick around this thread because I hope that eventually a fix or new version will come around that enables me to use it. Upgrading WP is an incredible pain in the **&&% the manual way.

The developers of WP really need to make upgrading smooth and easy. But they seem to think things are fine the way they are. Complaints in the WP support forums about the difficult upgrade process are generally met with the suggestion that if you can't do it quickly the manual "Codex" way you are technically hopeless and belong on WordPress . com.

Manu - Don't feel lonely. The plugin does not work for some of us. I have never been able to figure out why in my case, although I am pretty sure it is related to having WordPress installed in its own subdirectory off root. I have communicated with several others with the same kind of install where it does not work. We are in the minority, though. The author of the plugin tried to track down the problem several months ago, but was not successful. So for now at least we can do it the manual way even if it is a pain in the#&*@!

Great list. I did #2 in the attic loft space above our second floor this year. There was old insulation there, but in bad shape. I put a new thick layer over that and what a difference! Much cooler in summer and much warmer in winter.

-Will

This is interesting. Especially since the tax dollars of ALL taxpayers support the FBI, I think the logo should be available to all.

btw... I had no trouble with your English. ;-)

-Will

Well that is great that Keith is alive and well! I don't know about Anna's display issue, but the problem I have is the one that Keith posted about in another thread on this plugin. He had acknowledged that the plugin crashes on a certain number of installations, but there has been no conclusion why this is. I can't find that post now, but if I do, I'll link to it here. hopefully it will eventually get resolved. This plugin is so highly praised by those who it works for, the rest of us are really jealous!

Anna - I don't know specifically about your display problem, but could you change your password to 3 digits just for the upgrade process, then change it back? I don't know if 3 is too short to be allowed, but you could try.

I don't think this plugin is supported any longer. The author has not been here in this comment thread since early September. I hope he is OK, but that is an occasional problem with the internet. If something happens to a person with a presence on the web, they often just disappear without a trace, leaving their fans to wonder what happened.

This plugin seems to be a miracle for the majority of people, but some of can't use it without major errors. I don't think anyone has ever uncovered the source of those errors.

So far, it seems like no takers on this. I did notice something else a few times since I upgraded to WP2.3.

When I edit an existing post that already has a Numly number, I used to get issued a new number. This makes sense as if I change the original article, technically it becomes different. This is not happening since I upgraded to 2.3. Now I can edit a post and a new Numly number is not generated.

Has anyone else noticed this. I wonder if it is the plugin acting differently with 2.3 or if it something on the site. I'll ask Chris about it.

-Will

I now find that there is another thread/post here for this plugin and find the answer to my question that I TRIED to post on the other tread. Oh Well....

What is the schedule to fix this for those of us, (lots) that have WordPress in its own directory?

It does not appear the author of this plugin has responded to questions here in over two months, but I will try anyway.

The plugin does not work for me because I have wordpress installed in its own directory. After starting the plugin in manual mode it tells me it has backed up the db successfully. But when I click to download the file, it can't find it. Error message:

"Nothing found for wpau-backup Wpau-db-backupAHFsdca.zip"

I did use ftp to download it manually. It was there, just not where the plugin was looking for it.

Because of this I did not continue the backup procedure thinking that there would be further similar errors in the process.

What do you suggest?

Thanks!

Very disturbing. Especially so if the original story was on the site of a hard working writer who finally wrote something that should garner a lot of traffic that they did not end up receiving!